A journalist recently smeared an organization I admire. Give a reporter a storyline, unearth some anecdotes, then generate supportive charts, and you have a front-page story. The article’s implied conclusions fit the liberal thirst for examples of regulatory capture, which are situations in which self-regulation by an industry creates supposedly lax regulation. Yes, the selected stories were true, as was a damaging chart. But the graphic required selecting definitions that favored the storyline. And the mistakes in the story would not necessarily be apparent to lay readers. Experts advise you be prepared for reputational damage before it occurs. Best practice is to understand where damage might come from and take steps to improve your brand to minimize risks and strengthen relationships to reduce damage. There is a reason why smart leaders hold proactive, off-record informational sessions with major influencers and invest in corporate…
Six best practices for shaping organizational culture
With the New Year approaching, it’s time to rethink your organization’s culture and not just its goals. Here are best practices for leveraging your culture to create business success. Winnow your list of values Across the street from my house sits a welcoming red-tile-roofed Catholic grade school campus with bright white adobe walls. The children wear navy blue uniforms, and the well-kept Catholic Church at its center has the charm only decades can bestow. School leaders recently placed banners naming the school’s values on the wire-fenced wall enclosing the playground: Sharing Stewardship Respect Service Gratitude Empathy Cooperation Celebration Building peace The school has too many values! What is the essence of the culture the school is trying to create? I understand the fine-tuning the administrators sought to articulate – empathy is different than gratitude – but what is at the school’s core? What…
How Lyft can surpass Uber
My daughter, Lauren Christianson, does experiential marketing out of an agency (Cunning) in NYC, producing events for clients such as ride-share company Lyft, Uber’s main competitor. Experiential marketing immerses customers in the brand’s promise, such as Lyft’s fun and irreverent brand personality. This past Halloween, for example, Lauren used special effects make-up artists to transform actors in San Francisco and New York City into zombies. People could request Lyft Zombie Mode and have a zombie delivered to their gathering. Other recent work includes Lyft Ghost Mode, a promotion for the new Ghostbusters movie, where users could take a ride in an Ecto-1 vehicle. (See picture.) There was also Lyft Jazz Mode at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, where riders could order a vehicle with live jazz musicians playing. Both companies are networks (also called two-sided markets) — digital platforms enabling individual…
Building, shifting, and destroying value
Economist Joseph Schumpeter called waves of industry change “creative destruction.” He argued disruption of the current industry structures and companies built a nation’s wealth. Most economists agree, viewing creative destruction as a necessary ingredient for economic growth. But Schumpeter was writing in 1942. Is creative destruction still a positive force in today’s world? Or are the benefits of creative destruction more nuanced and the costs far greater than Schumpeter argued? As I reflect on this question, I observe three types of disruptions to markets: new-to-market capabilities, reshaping of the industry value chain, and consolidation. While all three create winners and losers, the net benefits to society differ. New-to-market capabilities disruptions include examples like the steam engine, the telephone, the electric bulb, genetic profiling, and personal computers, creating industries that allow us to do things previously impossible. When an entrepreneur brings new-to-market capabilities to…
Would Checker Cab becoming UBER have been a good thing?
Let’s work backwards. Take Checker Cab, Michigan’s largest cab company and the only one to cover all 147 square miles of Detroit. After a strategic planning retreat, the owners, now calling the company Checkmate, decide to: Replace dispatch units and meters with an internet-based platform that manages fee calculation and customer billing and provides a faster and more consumer-friendly matching of drivers with riders. Change the pricing model to enable the company to earn excessive premiums in peak traffic. Eliminate its extensive driver training focused on defensive driving and driver and passenger safety. Lower its renowned standard for driver background checks. Sell rather than rent its fleet of cabs to drivers, so it no longer needs to pay insurance. Create a process to make sure drivers are insured. Whether individual owners’ insurance covers cars used for commercial purposes is unclear, but hey, that’s…
Uber: A business model innovation that benefits and exploits
“Is the Uber disruption of local taxi and town-car markets a positive business model innovation for consumers?” a former colleague asked me. Uber, and its competitors Lyft and Sidecar, are disrupting the regulated taxi and limo-service markets by enabling ride-seekers to secure transit in privately owned cars using a mobile app. The entrepreneurs have used technology to both transform what has largely been a local market into a national/global market and dramatically improve customer service (e.g., automated billing, knowing potential drivers’ locations, cleaner cars, customer feedback on specific drivers, etc.). I am not in the least bit surprised about the emergence of Uber and its direct and indirect competitors (like Ridejoy, an on-line car pooling service). These disruptions demonstrate a number of consumer-friendly trends underway in our economy. Technology automates human tasks and makes markets more efficient and effective. Who needs friends–with-friends when…